


help me hold my head above the water

by surgicalstainless



Series: tidal [4]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, Chuck Lives, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Raleigh has good ideas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 21:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surgicalstainless/pseuds/surgicalstainless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seems like there has never been a time when Mako Mori was not at least a little bit in love with Chuck Hansen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	help me hold my head above the water

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, this follows directly on from "Do not consign me to the waves just yet," and covers about the same time-span as "Finally catching sight of the shore." It may be slightly confusing if you haven't read the previous installments.

 

 

Chuck Hansen was fifteen when he fell in love with Mako Mori. She'd just beaten him soundly in the kwoon, with easy grace and a minimum of moves.

Twice.

She became his closest friend, his fiercest rival, his wisest confidante, and even through his angriest years, his devotion never, ever wavered.

And Mako Mori? 

It seems like there has never been a time when she was not at least a little bit in love with Chuck Hansen.

 

***

 

There was nothing to see when the rescue helicopter returned. The waiting medical team rushed the entire escape pod directly into an examination room, door swinging shut behind them. They did not reopen for some time.

When the doors finally opened, it was to discharge a single scrub-clad doctor, her face weary but smiling. She came to a halt before Marshall Hansen, touched him gently on the shoulder. 

"Would you like to see your son?"

It was almost as if, Mako reflected, they were attending a birth. Or a rebirth; that seemed apt. Chuck Hansen had gone down to the depths and come up through fire. He could not now be the same. The question was: what had changed?

The Marshall straightened his spine and followed the doctor. The doors closed behind them once more, and stayed that way.

Those waiting, finding themselves with nothing to do, began to disperse. Raleigh led Mako back to their living quarters. He needed to finish his interrupted shower, and she had never started hers. They would both probably feel better after after bathing, Mako thought. They parted in the corridor between their respective doors, fingers untangling for the first time since that moment in LOCCENT. Mako wondered if Raleigh's hand felt colder now, too.

***

Tendo, of course, was the one with the news. He found Mako and Raleigh eating lunch in the cafeteria, and sat down to pass on the tidings. 

"Chuck's still unconscious. They say he's got a concussion. He's also severely dehydrated and has some mild radiation burns, but that's about it for injuries. The docs say he was really lucky, but they won't know more until he wakes up." Tendo gave them a tired smile and stole a bread roll from Raleigh's plate. "You might be allowed to visit if you go over after lunch. He's supposed to be stabilized by now."

He grinned at them once more around a mouthful of bread and moved to talk to the next table. Mako's soft "thank you" was too late to catch him, but she sent it all the same.

Mako had all but given up on lunch, and Raleigh was a fast eater. Together they made for the medical wing. It had the same aura of calm-after-the-storm as the rest of the Shatterdome, its staff quietly cleaning and setting things to rights. Mako found the air of returning normality at once reassuring and painful — what, now, was normal? What kind of normal included that quiet, still form covered in tubes and wires in an over-large hospital bed?

Chuck Hansen had never looked like this before. Mako thought she had known all his faces, all his moods, but never had she seen him so pale, stark under what looked like a sunburn, dark red hair and eyelashes vivid against wan skin. Never had she seen Chuck so still; she was accustomed to her friend always in motion, his hands or his mouth forever working, often at something unfortunate. Lying like this, without even the languor of sleep, he seemed reduced to size. He seemed, to Mako, to be exactly only twenty-one, barely a man, and not a veteran soldier who had helped save the world. 

It struck her the way nothing else had. Chuck was the best friend of her childhood, and the sight of him laid low sparked a storm of emotions altogether foreign. She could not name them, did not have the words. Mako dropped Raleigh's hand, unaware she'd been squeezing it painfully all that time, flexed her numb fingers. It did not occur to her she hadn't spoken a word, or acknowledged the Marshall, or even approached the bed. She only turned on a bootheel and a swirl of blue-black hair and left the room, before the tears could start to fall.

***

Mako moved through the next few days on a hazy autopilot. Raleigh made her eat, and spar, when she didn't have enough energy to say no. Tendo was kind enough to give her updates on everything that happened. Max went for walks with her until he was tired out. Marshall Hansen coordinated a few interviews, to keep the press mollified, and she and Raleigh played their parts and answered the same questions over and over and over again.

It seemed to Mako as if time had ground to a halt, as if she was caught in an endlessly circling eddy while the larger currents rushed by. Her own thoughts spun and jittered, and there was a tight ball of something writhing just beneath her breastbone. Nothing inside her was  _still_ , yet she was getting nowhere. Always, every movement she made began as a step toward medical, toward the bed where Chuck Hansen lay — and every movement ended aborted, rethought, just another twitch or shiver or flinch.

Chuck hadn't stayed unconscious all that long after his rescue, Raleigh told her. He was keeping up with Chuck's progress, whether on her behalf or of his own interest, she could not tell. Raleigh said that Chuck had awoken with a terrible headache and some gaps in his memory, but that his mind appeared sound.  _So, an improvement, then_ , Mako thought, though the joke died long before it reached her lips. 

"He's also escaped any serious acute radiation injury, the doctors say. The shielding on those pods must be something else. They're worried about anemia, and infection because his immune system's compromised, but for the most part he's just a really cranky guy with a headache and a sunburn." Raleigh shook his head and smiled at her, possibly in response to some joke he wasn't saying. He nudged her shoulder. "You should visit him."

Mako leaned into the nudge, let her head fall onto his shoulder (it was a convenient height), but did not reply. They were in her bunk, slumped onto her bed, watching  _The Princess Bride_. The movie was playing, to be more precise, and it was a comfortable background that did not require Mako to pay close attention. Her bunk smelled like popcorn and tea, and a slight spicy smell she associated with Raleigh. It was nice, this moment, Mako thought. The nameless knot still seethed in her chest, and her mind still roiled, but slower now, a little. Mako wondered what she would find, if she visited Chuck in his hospital bed. Would she find her friend again, now that the war was done; would she find an angry, damaged, useless man, or perhaps some stubborn ghost? Would she be able to live with some combination of the three?

Would she simply rather not know?

No, Mako decided, now was not the time to stop being brave. As the standoff at the edge of the Fire Swamp came to an end, Mako nudged Raleigh's shoulder back. "Yes," she told him. "I think I will."

***

It did not go well.

Chuck was sore and cranky and irritable; she could hear his voice from down the hall, but as soon as she entered the room the talking stopped. He looked — better. Animated, at least, rather than the inert, waxen figure that had been haunting her dreams. He was still pale under that strange sunburn, and it was still alarming to see so many wires and tubes threaded beneath the hospital gown, but Chuck was sitting up and talking, and that was good.

If only he would talk to her. They sat in stilted silence for a few minutes, and Mako realized with an awful pang that he would not even look at her, that he kept his eyes on the bedspread, the television, his own feet — anything but her. Had they drifted so far apart as that, Mako asked herself in bewilderment. Was he angry at her? What was he afraid to find, if he looked?

Mako sat with him a few minutes more, to see if anything would change. Nothing did, and Chuck did not glance up as she left.

***

"I miss my friend," Mako confessed to Raleigh over dinner that night. The noodles were growing cold, and she spun them around her chopsticks as she talked, but she  _was_  eating, for a change.

"He was not always so angry, so tired," she continued, in response to Raleigh's skeptical raised eyebrow. "He fought so many battles in the last few months, and he never let himself rest. He would not admit it, but I think he was afraid. He is still so young. We both are."

"I miss funny Chuck, who always says the wrong thing, who always wants to spar with me even though he never wins." Raleigh snorted into his chocolate milk at that, and Mako smiled herself at the memory. "But he will not even look at me, and I do not know why. So much has changed, but —"

She broke off, unable to find the words for what she feared. Raleigh seemed to know, though, as usual. His knee pressed briefly against hers under the table. "Can I pick the movie tonight? It must be my turn by now," he asked, smiling to ease the change of subject.

Mako turned mock-serious eyes on him. "Your movie education is still incomplete, Mister Becket. There is much more to the medium than movies about sports."

Raleigh's eyes crinkled in a hidden laugh as he rose. "Then maybe we should compromise." He took the untouched chocolate pudding cup from his tray and weighed it in his palm, as if in contemplation. "See you in a little while?"

Mako watched his retreat from the cafeteria with some little confusion, then turned back to her cold and slimy noodles.

***

Mako and Raleigh, and around them the whole Shatterdome, began to settle into some kind of new normal. There were fewer people in the halls, less noise in the common spaces. Mako supposed that made sense: many Shatterdome workers had homes and families to return to, and no work now to keep them here. Mako had no work either, but she did her best to keep busy. It was easier than thinking about home or family. Always now a fistful of worms writhed under her heart, made her jumpy and loath to be idle. She helped Marshall Hansen with paperwork and funding questions, did interviews when asked, went to Tendo for menial tasks when all else failed.

She was looking for him in LOCCENT, covered in an unpleasant grime of sweat, dust and engine oil from rearranging a storage locker, when an unexpected sight made her pause. Raleigh was talking to Tendo, one hip leaned easily against the comms desk, a bulky brown paper bag in one hand. They were laughing about something, the sound warming to Mako's ears. As she approached, Raleigh wrapped an arm around the Chief Tech's shoulders. 

"Thanks, man, I owe you," he was saying, and then he turned to extend his smile to her. It was an open smile, bright, of a kind she was not used to seeing. Mako's chest clenched in a different way, at the sight, and she wondered if she could miss a friend she'd never really met. Raleigh and his paper bag took their leave, but that smile seemed to linger.

Raleigh did not share Mako's compulsion to be busy. He did his share of interviews, and pitched in with paperwork or heavy lifting whenever Mako asked, but he seemed — peaceful. She knew he spent long hours reading, in his bunk and in various perches around the Shatterdome. Once or twice, she knew, he'd gone down to visit the K-Science division, seemingly just to say hello. He still came to Mako with his excess energy, dragging her to the kwoon to spar, and pretended not to notice that her moves weren't as fast as they could be.

They spent every evening together. They spent the time on Mako's reeducation of Raleigh's taste in movies, or quiet card games, or long walks around the edges of the Shatterdome. More often than not, they passed the nights together, too, wedged tightly side by side in one or the other's too-small bed. Raleigh had trouble sleeping, Mako knew. These days, so did she. The company helped, some. If it could have been something else — he never offered, and neither did she.

Raleigh touched Mako often, to her surprise. She had never had a friend so easy with contact. Her Sensei had been a reserved man, and Chuck and her fellow Ranger cadets were always in a little too much awe to be really familiar. Raleigh, she found, was demonstrative. Always he offered a nudge on the shoulder, a brief clasp of hands, a warm side to lean upon. She was learning that she liked it. Raleigh was a safe port in the wildly changed world, a reliable navigable point.

Mako found she felt a little less restless on Raleigh's lee side.

***

Mako had just filled her lunch tray when she felt a broad hand fall on her shoulder. It was Raleigh, of course; he was balancing a heavily-laden tray of his own. "Let's eat somewhere else today," he said, and led the way out of the cafeteria. Mako followed, because he was her partner, and his ideas were good.

She did hesitate a little when she realized he was heading for Medical. Confusion, mixed with apprehension, swirled through her — what was Raleigh planning? — but Raleigh did not pause at the hitch in her step, so she made herself keep moving. Raleigh did have good ideas, she reminded herself, even if they were not her kind of ideas, and the squirming knot in her chest was a little less every day. He was waiting for her at the door, a reassuring smile in his eyes as he gestured for her to precede him.

If Mako hadn't been so caught in her own unease she might have laughed at the look on Chuck's face as she walked into his room. It flitted rapidly from petulant, to pleased, to appalled, to something that might have been guilt, all in the few seconds before Chuck dropped his eyes. Raleigh nudged Mako in the back with his tray until she moved to sit by Chuck's bed, then pulled up a rolling table for their food. 

Mako made use of the new, lower angle to examine Chuck more closely. She hadn't seen him in nearly a week, and he looked both better and worse than before. He'd regained some color, and most of the tubes and wires were gone, but his face was peeling in unfortunate patches. Were she more sure of their footing, Mako might have teased Chuck about that, but for now she held her tongue. Chuck was wearing his own clothes, she noted, and wondered who had brought them for him.

Despite Chuck's apparent determination to avoid her eyes, she looked up to catch him peeking. He seemed worried, whether by her or about her, Mako could not tell. She sent him a small smile that was meant to be reassuring, although she was not sure what the result looked like. It felt odd to smile. Her muscles hadn't tried to take that shape in some time.

However it looked, her smile did its work, because she got a little grimace in return. It was a ghost of the Chuck Hansen smile she knew of old, the full-wattage one that could brighten a room or soften a heart or sell a million magazines, but it was something. There, and then gone, and Chuck was staring at his lunch tray again.

Raleigh reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out a deck of cards. "Phase 10," he told Chuck as he set it on the table. "You ever played?"

Mako watched Chuck  _almost_  spit out a smart remark, before he closed his mouth and shook his head. Raleigh did, too, if the momentary clench of his jaw was any indication. He merely sat down, though, handed Chuck a pudding cup, and began to explain the rules. 

It was surprisingly easy to sit between Chuck and Raleigh and play cards. She had expected animosity between the two men, not this... uneasy accord. Mako listened as Raleigh told Chuck about all the news he'd missed, watched as Chuck slowly began to relax into the company. She listened to the quiet shuffle and snap of cards, the conversation that was fumbling towards easy banter. Mostly, she kept her eyes on her cards, except when Raleigh needed her help with names, or to provide corroborating testimony.

Chuck was clearly making an effort. He shared some funny stories about life in the medical wing, and even told Raleigh about the first time he had sparred with Mako, all those years ago. He exaggerated wildly, of course, but Raleigh looked delighted, so she left them to the tale. Chuck finished it by declaring "I couldn't help but fall in love" with a wink and a smile.

Mako gave him the retort he'd been looking for; it was easy, playing the straight man to Chuck's wisecracking. They'd been bantering back and forth for so long it was almost habit now. She let herself wonder at his words this time, though. He was joking, yes, but that did not mean he was not being truthful. The thought that  _she had almost lost all this_  squeezed something in her chest that was already pressed tight, threatened to break it open completely. Mako could see, in her mind's eye, where she wanted to be — but how to get there, when the currents moved them still further apart, when it seemed to take all her efforts just to stay in one place?

"Raleigh, have you ever heard the story of Chuck's second kaiju deployment?"

"What?" Chuck spluttered. "No! Why would you want to tell that story?"

"One of the jaeger techs had a daughter who was about our age. She was very beautiful, and Chuck was smitten," she went on, ignoring Chuck completely.

"No I wasn't. You can't just go making stuff like that up, Mori. Stop with your lies —" but Mako had a carrying voice, when she wished it.

"He mooned over her for months. He wrote truly awful poetry about her, which he would then make me read. Every time I saw him, all he talked about was this girl. What was her name? Lily? Livia?"

Mako turned to Chuck for help, but Chuck had turned a curious shade of purple and was resting his head on his lunch tray. Raleigh gazed at them both in delighted bemusement, and Mako took advantage of Chuck's mortified silence to play a couple of turns of the card game.

"Anyway," she continued, "Chuck finally got the courage to talk to her one afternoon in the jaeger bay. He was on the cover of that month's  _Girlfriend_  magazine, you know" (a strange noise came from the hospital bed at this), "and he thought he could offer to sign her copy. He was very nervous, though, and he forgot how to speak in full sentences. He had not progressed much past 'hello' when the alert tones went off."

They each took a turn picking up and discarding a card in the pause, though Chuck still hadn't raised his head from the tray. 

"It had not been going well for Chuck, so the alert gave him a chance to regroup, and impress her with his nice form-fitting drivesuit. He came running out of the changing rooms, looking very heroic, ready to fight the kaiju. Unfortunately, that was the moment Ranger Hansen senior appeared and burst into laughter. The girl — Liv? Libby? Something like that — started laughing, too, and so did everyone else. Chuck was  _squelching_ , you see."

Raleigh did  _not_  see, but he looked enthralled nonetheless. Chuck seemed to be concentrating very hard on his cards.

"Thick, white foam was bubbling up over the tops of his drivesuit boots, and frothing out from all the seams. He had left a trail of sudsy footprints all the way from —"

Chuck slapped his hand down on the table, face up, fanning them out to show a winning combination. Raleigh's expression was one of complete surprise, and Mako could not restrain a scoff at the rude interruption; she did not like to  _lose_ , either. 

Chuck took in both their faces and began to laugh.

It was a glad, carefree laughter, of the kind Mako hadn't heard from him in — years, it seemed. She had been terribly afraid she would never hear it again, and the uneasy squirming in her chest stilled almost completely at the sound. She glanced over at Raleigh, to share in the moment...

 

Raleigh looked — Raleigh looked  _awed_ , something flickering in his eyes, a light that had not been there before. Mako knew that look: it had washed across his face on the day they met. She turned, to see what he saw.

Chuck was still laughing, eyes closed and head tipped back, long throat bare. There were tears shining on his eyelashes, and his shoulders shook. His smile was so bright it hurt Mako to watch.

Raleigh has good ideas, Mako thought to herself, and let herself fall with him.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that the movie Mako and Raleigh compromised on was "Cool Runnings." I think Mako would make a pretty good bobsled pilot. 
> 
> Comments always welcome!
> 
> ____
> 
> You are of course encouraged to come visit me on [tumblr](http://z-delenda-est.tumblr.com). I have no idea what I'm doing, but more friends are always better. And I really like prompts.


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